he had me until "One app in particular - spotlight, blew me off the water, especially after having dealt on Linux with crappy clones like beagle (...)"

I dunno, a year ago? beagle? wow. no, just no.

There's a lot to talk about, there's the dysphoria that Canonical is doing something about (i.e leveraging ubuntu the operating system, instead of ubuntu the linux distribution consisting of random allotment of random software)

There's the whole "how do I make an app, where's the SDK?"

There's also issues concerning the inherent attitude when approaching OSS projects, not everyone knows of the aspects of being an good OSS komrade.